From March 21 to April 20, 2015, the Museum of Odesa Modern Art, with the support of the PO “Development Center”, is holding an exhibition of works by modern Odesa artists “Collection. Made in Odesa”.

The first title of this exhibition was a somewhat sentimental but very accurate phrase: Lifelong Collection.
This is how Olena and Semen Vernyk assembled this collection.
Happy sixties… And what years in Odesa are not fun if you are young and in love?
They were a little over 40 (for two) when their new friends – budding artists, began to show them unusual pictures. I liked the pictures, as well as my friends. But what made “ordinary Soviet people” – an engineer and a music teacher – start collecting works of art? Well, it was not accepted by the builders of communism! Stamps – yes! As a last resort, postcards with portraits of your favorite artists…

Of course, the “apartment issue” was important – where to store paintings? But perhaps even more important is the fact that no one, even the most hardened soldier of the Party, could think of hanging the picture “Vanya at Marten’s” or “Ilyich on the Aurora Bridge”. New people were to appear: artists who refused to paint leaders and barricades, and their fellow citizens, well-educated 25-year-olds who were not satisfied with cartoons from Krokodil magazine.
The Beatles and football, wine and miniskirts, Bulgakov and the theater – there were many reasons for meetings and endless arguments, but very quickly art became the main thing. Apartment exhibitions of those who will later be recognized as the “second Odesa avant-garde” have begun. It was really a stage of formation as artists, but also as collectors.